Music as Community

For a while now, I've been quite aware of the whole "Musician-as-Entrepreneur" community. This community revolves around re-visualizing the artist as the small business-person. And it has done some pretty important things, notably spreading the ideas that you don't need a "music executive" to give you permission to make music, and that it's perfectly acceptable for artists to make money from their art.

Here are some examples of this movement:
David Hooper - music business
Bob Baker - music business advisor
Scott Andrew - diy musician

But after listening to these ideas for several years now, I'm starting to feel like something's missing. They're good ideas. I just need something more.

After all, I became a performing musician so I could influence others, and share my songs and ideas with them.

So I'm re-thinking what it means to be a musician. And I'm thinking of a new model for independent music.

Musicians as instigators.
Songs as powerful ideas.
Bands as causes.
Concerts as actualized change.

This is how I've thought for some time now. Only now, I see it more clearly.

My role as musician is to be an instigator or catalyst of change. My songs are the pieces of time and tone that encapsulate the powerful feelings and ideas of change. My band is a cause to be believed in. My concerts are moments when our vision becomes actualized.

And the concert and the listeners and the audience...that is the music becoming community.